Talk:Circumcision/Archive 1

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Archive This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.
Archive 1
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Contents

Declaration of Biases

A summary of who has declared what biases:

Do babies feel pain?

RK - Babies don't have fully developed nervous systems at birth the way that an adult, teenager, or child does later on.

anon - the current wisdom is that babies do feel pain in an 'adult way'. Also babies have the disadvantage of not understanding time.

LDC - the idea that infants don't feel pain the same way or as intensely as adults was debunked long ago

anon - Yes, they do feel pain: http://www.cnn.com/HEALTH/9712/23/circumcision.anesthetic/

FGM

male circumcision is not comparable with female genital mutilation (FGM). RK

FGM is far worse, but mutilation is mutilation. Piercing children's ears is mutilation too. -- Tarquin

LDC - I'm going to move additions about legal challenges to a new page, where hopefully others may add other legal tidbits on both sides.

Freedom of religion

  • To Jews and Muslims the practice is a religious commandment. Should freedom of religion take precedence over medical concerns? Or not?
  • Is the anti-circumcision movement anti-semitic?

Which countries?

Which countries practice routine circumcision? Israel? Middle East? the USA?

Origins

Did circumcision originate in hygeine concerns?

Neolithic tribes practice cutting and mutilation of the genitals. And they are quite willing to tell you they do it for mystical / spiritual / religious (ie, psychological) reasons.

I'm wondering who you mean here by Neolithic tribes?. Of course, people that practice circumcision for religious reasons will give "mystical / spiritual reasons" for doing so. That does not, however, mean that these are the real reasons for the emergence of a custom or rite.

You talk of neolithic tribes in the present tense, as far as i'm aware the neolithic period was thousands of years ago!

  • Were ancient humans even sane enough to consider a rationale like 'hygiene'? Please discuss at: Insanity of primitives
  • The first person is typically is a bad idea in an encyclopedic article.

Benefits

  • Does circumcision benefit the child? Religiously, if not medically? Dante Alighieri 01:28 Dec 5, 2002 (UTC)
  • Also, peer presure is a concern - uncircumcised children may be teased --Dante Alighieri 01:53 Dec 5, 2002 (UTC)
circumcised children may be teased in places where it is uncommon
  • some parents (wrongly) think "it's better for their health", FvdP
  • medical opinion does not favour circumcision. Tannin
  • most doctors now recognize the medical benefits of circumcision (proven in multiple peer-reviewed studies) but nonetheless do not favor circumcision. RK
  • The attitude of Mothering Magazine can be summarised as "Keep your hands off my baby." They argue that it is wrong to knowingly inflict pain on helpless baby boys. They contend that circumcision offers no clear and unequivocal medical benefits.

Individual liberty

  • There is a philosophical question - What is our relation to our children? A baby does not make personal choices. A circumcised baby has been permanently altered - are there issues of consent?
  • Western ideas of individual liberty may make actions like circumcision as an infant unacceptable, because it's a physical change with no consent. Karl
  • compare the choice of education: that has consequences that can't be entirely reverted, and it has to be made by the parents, not by the child. --FvdP
  • how can we possibly assume the right to mutilate a child's body without any compelling health reason when he is incapable of contributing to the decision? jaknouse 01:44 Apr 23, 2003 (UTC)
  • Is the foreskin part of the penis? moved to talk:Penis

There are actually ancient proscriptions in Islam AGAINST circumcision, even though it's a common practice today. Also, there are very many circumsized men today who report a lack of sensitivity in the glans of their penes that is almost certainly due to being circumcized. Human beings are extremely variable in every aspect of their body functioning, so circumcision is little or no hindrance to many men, but it's a significant problem for many more. Compare the now-discredited practices of performing routine tonsillectomies and appendectomies on healthy children. jaknouse 01:44 Apr 23, 2003 (UTC) (paraphrased)

RK, some of your recent edits are unacceptable. Adding scare quotes around terms you do not like or using phrases like "hypothesized" and "one theory" injects a subtle POV into the article. We could just as well write about "medical benefits" instead of medical benefits etc.

You are incorrect on this issue. First off, I did not add scare quotes around these words. I don't know what you are talking about. The previous version was totally POV, because it took one theory about the origin of circumcision ten thousands years ago, and presented it as an indisputable fact! Obviosuly, that is totally unacceptable, and a violation of Wikipedia NPOV stanards. The fact is that no one knows for sure why circumcision first started, and mutliple theories on this subject exist. In fact, it may have independently evolved in different areas for different reasons. RK
You did add scare quotes around the term "barbaric", they were already there in the case of "sexual mutilation". I will remove them in both instances. Furthermore, you are incorrect that the previous version presented the suppression of masturbation as the only acceptable theory, in fact, it was in that respect less biased and more balanced than your last edit. In addition to that, you have now removed the Maimonides passage and improperly rewrote other parts. You are trying to inject a POV into the article by rejecting any notion that circumcision was practiced by Jews to control sexual behavior, which Maimonides himself openly admitted. --Eloquence
In most cases, the quotes already were there. Finally, I still think that you have misread the early version; the opening originally made it clear that there was only one serious theory as to the origin of circimcision. That version was misleading. RK
Now, I see that you claim that the changes I made are POV? Why? I do not understand your position that the results of modern day scientific studies, which show medical benefits, should be labelled with the same degree of certainty as theories about the origin of a cultural practice some 10,000 years ago. These two cases are not comparable. We can perform peer-reviewed double-blind medical studies today; we cannot do any such studies for how behaviours evolved in the past. RK
Certainly not, but we know a lot by now about how the brain works, and that decisions, especially in a religious context, usually have an emotional origin. We also know now that antisexuality is a specific cultural manifestation that can be found in a context of sexual deprivation, see e.g. Body Pleasure and the Origins of Violence and this recent analysis of world cultural surveys. We also know that virtually all antisexual groups provide pretexts for their activity, e.g. modern religious fundamentalists claim that premarital sex needs to be controlled because of STDs and pregnancies. This knowledge allows us to conclude that circumcision probably evolved, or at least was practiced, out of a desire to control sexuality. Of course, many of these points are controversial and should be presented as such, but nevertheless, this perspective must receive proper exposure. --Eloquence
I disagree. To the best of my knowledge, scientists and historians have not concluded that circumcision probably evolved out of a desire to control sexuality. Have any individuals concluded thus? Sure, probably quite a few. But is this the mainstream consensus? No. We simply don't have the data necessary to make such a speculative conclusion. I persoanlly think that the idea of sympathetic magic is much more likely. RK


It should be noted that the studies finding circumcision to have medical benefits usually do not take into account the hygienic conditions among the circumcised and the uncircumcised subjects of the study. The underlying assumption is that they require equal care. Under that assumption, circumcision does indeed have some benefits such as the UTI reduction. However, the assumption is a flawed one: An uncircumcised penis requires more care than a circumcised one, simply because there is more skin to care about. What we are seeing in these studies, then, are not benefits of circumcision, but the effects of insufficient hygiene.

Many of the modern studies do take these factors into account. It is the older studies from the 1940-1960s that did not.
Then show me a single study that takes into account that a circumcised penis requires less care than an uncircumcised one and still shows medical benefits of circumcision. This means that the study must have controlled the non-circumcised members of its sample for daily hygiene procedures. Just picking one random 1998 study on UTIs, the main "medical benefit", shows that this control has not taken place. --Eloquence
And also note the full context of what I added. The current medical consensus is that despite the added medical benefits, most doctors do not reccomend circumcision, because the benefits are usually quite small. I think you may be arguing against a point I am not making. RK
The question is still whether the medical benefits exist in the first place, or whether they are methodological artifacts. --Eloquence

Another key point that is currently being downplayed is the question: Are the risks of circumcision higher than the benefits? An infant can die or be severely affected for the rest of his life from a circumcision gone wrong. I have seen pictures of such complications and believe me, they are not pretty. If you take the above hygiene factor into account, you can arrive at this conclusion: Under proper hygiene, an intact penis is no more vulnerable than a mutilated one; however, the act of mutilation places its victim at severe risk. Thus, circumcision becomes effectively a dangerous procedure.

Isn't this treated in detail in the article? And isn't this the reason that many doctors no longer push routine neonatal circumcision? In fact, I recently added several statements to the article saying that modern day doctors do not reccomend routine circumcision. I think some people are so scared of seeing any medical benefits for circumcision at all, that they don't even read the new paragraoh all the way through to their conclusion. RK
Since this article will be read by parents, we simply need to give a sound, reasonable summary and inform them in clear terms that circumcising their child puts them at a proven risk, whereas not doing so may provide smaller(!) medical benefits. --Eloquence

We are not currently providing the evolutionary side of the argument: The foreskin is a complex organ that developed in many animals as a result of natural selection. It therefore has to provide survival benefits, otherwise it would not exist. And before you respond that the foreskin is a "remnant", take a look at one: The human foreskin, again, is the result of evolutionary improvements, compared to other primate foreskins.

Your argument here is, to say the least, highly controversial, and unproven. Such arguments exist for a few parts of the human body, and for a huge number of gene sequences in the human geonome. Let's just say that this is a bit speculative at the moment. RK
There is nothing speculative about evolution. Complex organs do not evolve by chance, especially if they are (as circumcision advocates claim) harmful. Furthermore, the argument is a common one and thus needs to be properly represented in the article. --Eloquence
Whoah, who is denying that evolution is a fact? Not I! I never once said or implied any such thing. I know, for a fact, that evolution occurs. Rather, I was saying that your idea about the necessity of the foreskin today is speculative. I do admit that it is reasonable, of course. RK
Allow me to amplify my original idea, which probably has more applicability in other articles: Just because we see that a part of an organ, or a particular gene sequence, happens to still exist today, doesn't mean that it is still necessary. Evolution includes some dead-ends and redundancies, as well as dangerous mistakes. The best example of inherent evolved problems is that evolution always fails to deal with the biologial health of an organism after it reaches the age of reproduction. Most animal bodies go to heck and begin malfunctioning, aging, and finally dying shortly after losing the ability to reproduce. Modern science has already proven that this is unnecessary. Now that we are uncovering the multiple causes of aging, and learning how they work, many scientists believe that with a minor of number of genetic tweaks, we might be able to allow humans to live well past 300 years! This, of course, is more for the genetics or evolution article. RK

Lastly, the issue of sexual function is currently not sufficiently addressed. There have, in fact, been studies into this which found that sexual function is significantly impaired by male genital mutilation. There are two types of study that can be done:

  • Asking a large number of women who had sex with both circumcised and uncircumcised men which they prefer
  • Asking men who have been cut as adults about their sex life before/after.
You are betraying a radical POV by claiming that every circumcision is some sort of mutilation. You must calm down if you want to discuss this issue impartially. As long as the anti-circumcision crowd tries to throw all Jews and most Muslims in jail as child-abusing mutilators (and many anti-circumcision groups are trying to pass such laws), the anti-circumcision hysteria prevents any calm and scientific discussion. Chill out. RK
I am not claiming that every circumcision is some sort of mutilation. I do call routine infant circumcision, or in fact any circumcision in absence of a clear expression of consent mutilation. As for your fears of persecution, Jews and Muslims would not be imprisoned for genital mutilations that took place prior to the passing of the law. Other than that, I see nothing wrong with the idea. Religious freedom ends where the freedom of the individual begins. Or would you defend clitoridectomy for religious reasons? --Eloquence
But this is still saying that Jews and Muslims should be thrown into jail as child mutilators after the law is passed; this gives me little comfort. In fact, it terrifies me. I do agree with you that religious freedom ends where the freedom of the individual begins. However, your bad analogy proves my point. You ask me "Or would you defend clitoridectomy for religious reasons?" I don't understand why you think this is the same as circumcision. It is not. Clitoridectomy is the removal of the clitoris; in males this would be equivalent to removal of the penis. I am opposed to both such savage mutilations. That is precisely why I spent so much time trying to explain that the foreskin is not the penis. I personally have very little foreskin, due to my circumcision as a child, but I do have a fully functioning penis! This issue should be very obvious, yet msot people still get confused about it. RK

In addition to impaired normal sexual function, there is an obvious impact on the learning of masturbation. A circumcised penis tends to require the application of a lubricant, whereas in an intact one, the foreskin acts as a natural lubricant, and masturbation is much easier, in fact trivial. This is the reason why circumcision was prescribed as a "remedy" against masturbation in the first place. As for the Jewish views, there is an interesting book called "Questioning Circumcision: A Jewish Perspective" by Dr. Ronald Goldman, whose views I will try to incorporate. --Eloquence 02:19 Apr 23, 2003 (UTC)

I am aware of this book, and it does not discuss Jewish views of circumcision. Please do not portrary it as such, because that would be a deception of the highest order. The book is an attack on Judaism's views of circumcision, and has been rejected by Jews from all the Jewish denominations. Presenting this book as a "Jewish view" would be like presenting the New Testament as a "Jewish view" of Jesus. You could try to do it solely because of the ethnicity of the author, but it would be misleading, and dishonest. RK
Goldman's book is certainly accepted by many Jews who oppose the primitive ritual of circumcision, and as such his arguments deserve inclusion. --Eloquence
No, you are totally mistaken. Just because you can find a tiny number of Jews who believe X, doesn't mean that X is a part of Judaism. Are you claiming that Jesus-worshipping Protestant Christianity is "a Jewish view of Jesus"? Why not? Thousands of Jews have left Judaism and converted to fundamentlist Christianity, through one or more forms of messianic Judaism. Doesn's this prove that Christianity is a part of Judaism? No. All it proves is that a very tiny percent of American Jews have left Judaism, and have adopted Protestant fundamentalist Christianity. Just because a tiny percent of Jews have attacked Judaism as "savage" and "barbaric", and have adopted a non-Jewish view of circumcision, doesn't mean that this Judaism-rejection is now magially a part of Judaism. It isn't. If you want to cite this book as an example of people who reject Judaism as "barabric" and want to end circumcision, then fine. But if you present it as a Jewish point of view, that would be dishonest. It would be no less misleading and dishonest than the "Jews for Jesus" (a real group) that present the worship of Jesus as form of Judaism. RK
Who cares what religion people are? Talk about religion belongs on Talk:Judaisim or Talk:Christianity or somewhere of that nature. This page is supposed to be about circumcision. Religion is irrelevant to anatomy. Tannin